Key Laboratory of Animal Vaccine Development of the Ministry of Agriculture is one of first batch of key laboratories established by China Agriculture Department. As important component of veterinary drug and biology technical discipline group, the lab aims on developing the scientific and technical self-innovation and  industry development. The lab launches the applied foundation and technical research mainly about common issues of important disease prevention and control in domesticlivestock and poultry, especial for key points of vaccine research. Basic and technical research for application is carried out focusing on solving the theoretical, directional, overall and key problems of veterinary vaccine formulating.

The laboratory relies on veterinary medicine class-I discipline, preventive veterinary class-II discipline in college of veterinary medicine in South China Agricultural University. The laboratory does research on original pathogenic biology and epidemiology, mechanism of host-pathogen interaction, traditional vaccine production process improvement, new veterinary vaccine, and vaccine biology safety evaluation standard. The contents of each studies refer to the study on common and important diseases of veterinary medicine, including Avian influenza, swine influenza and canine influenza, Avian immune suppression diseases (Avian leukemia, Marek), common pig diseases (PRRSV, swine fever, PCV-II, HEV, Haemophilus parasuis etc.,), common poultry disease (NDV, IBV) and important zoonosis (Tuberculosis, Escherichia coli and Toxoplasma gondii infection).

Professor Ren Tao is the incumbent Laboratory Director. There are 19 fixed researchers in the lab, including 9 senior titles, 9 vice-senior title and 1 junior title.. This team was the national class teaching team, scientific and technical advanced team of Shen Nong and Chinese agriculture, advanced group of China overall education system, Changjiang scholar of Education ministry and the innovative team, development planning, innovative team and important animal disease prevention and control innovative team of agriculture department, owning 1 core member of the innovation team project of "Yangtze River scholars and innovation team development plan" of the Ministry of Education and 2 members with advanced individual titles of Guangdong province high education school “thousand-hundred-ten engineering”. It is a united, energetic, innovative, dynamic and influential academic team.

The laboratory was built by taking the Preventive Veterinary Medicine Department of College of Veterinary Medicine in South China Agricultural University as its core and basic veterinary disciplines and clinical veterinary disciplines as its basis. According to the guide of "strengthening the advantages and making up for the disadvantages", we optimized the compartment structure by establishing the research lab on poultry virus disease independently with the core of avian influenza research, mammalian (pig, dog) virus diseases, bacterial diseases and parasitic diseases respectively. Offices, new ABSL-3, laboratorial animal center and other platforms are integrated into the management department.

The inactivated avian influenza vaccine (H5N2 subtype, D7 strain, (2013) No. 12 of the new veterinary medicine)has been successfully developed by  laboratory . Since high pathogenic avian influenza vaccines have been exclusively developed and approved by the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute for a long time, the new veterinary drug certificate obtained by our laboratory is a breakthrough indicating that our laboratory has become the second entity with such new veterinary drug certificate in China. The successful transfer of the vaccine resulted in a direct economic benefit of 20 million yuan. The vaccines have been mass produced and effectively widely used in many provinces and municipalities in China, which has laid a solid foundation for our laboratory to become the leading position in the prevention and control of avian influenza in South China.